Page Two

Friday, September 27, 1946

DETROIT JEWISH CHRONICLE and The Legal Chronicle

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The King Who Betrayed Daniele Manin

By ALFRED WERNER
When I learned that the House
of Savoy had been deposed in fa-
vor of an Italian Republic as the
result of a plebiscite, I recalled
the Italian patriot who, nine dec-
ades ago, had sacrificed his Re-
publicanism for the sale of Italian
unity and given his blessings to
the prospective king of a united
Italy. It was, indeed, very hard
for a staunch republican like
Daniele Manin to abandon his po-
litical creed, but in order to help
Count Cavour, the "king-maker,"
and King Victor Emmanuel of
Piedmont — t h e grandfather of
Italy's last king, Victor Emma-
nuel III, he issued the following
statement:
"Faithful to my flag—independ-
ence and unification—I reject eve.
rything opposed to it. If regene-
rated Italy must have a king,
there must be only one, and that
one the King of Piedmont. The
Republican Party, so bitterly cal-
umniated, now performs another
act of abnegation, and makes a
sacrifice to the national cause.
Convinced that before everything
else we must make Italy, as that
is the principal question, supe-
rior to all others, it says to the
House of Savoy: Make Italy, and
I am with you. If not—no."
King Victor Emmanuel III be-
trayed and insulted the memory
of that great unselfish patriot
when, in 1922, he asked Mussolini
to form a government, thus sur-
rendering the spirit of democracy
to the evil forces of totalitarian-
ism. For Mussolini destroyed
Italy's unity, though he boasted
that his regime was backed by all
Italians, and he took his people
all along the road to serfdom. In
1938 the King did not protest
when the Blackshirts introduced
anti-Semitism in the country that
had never known anything like a
"Jewish problem" and which
counted many men of Jewish
origin, including Manin, among
its political pathfinders and pio-
neers!
I do not know whether Manln's
monument became a victim of
World War II. When I visited
Venice, a decade ago, our guide
stopped at the Campo Manin
where the great Venetian's statue
was erected by grateful citizens.
Manin, to be precise, was a
"half-Jew." His biographers, nev-
ertheless, profess to have found
Jewish traits in his character,
pointing especially to his unshak-
able optimism; he took a great

interest in Biblical studies and
some of his best friends and ad.
visers were Jews.
The Jews of Venice represented
a sort of aristocracy among the
Jews of Europe, at least until the
18th century. Thereafter their
wealth decreased owing to warn
and political changes. It was
probably the dire economic re-
strictions enforced upon the Jews
of Venice at the end of the
eighteenth century that compelled
Samuels Medina and Allegra Me-
dina Moravia, both of Verona
(which belonged to the territory
of the Venetian Republic) to em-
brace Christianity. They were
given the name of Manin after
their sponsor at the font. Their
son, Pietro Manin, married a
Gentile girl, Anna Maria Bellotto
who, in 1804, became the mother
of one of tub greatest 'figures in
the modern history of Venice.
Up to his mid-forties Manin led
the modest life of a middle-class
lawyer, without occupying any
political position of significance.
But he was not unaware of the
tyrannical system, imposed upon
Venice by her Austrian rulers. In-
furiated by Austria's many arbi-
trary actions, the little man with
the big spectacled head finally
lost his temper. He started a
Lotta Legale, a constitutional agi-
tation against the despotic meth-
ods of the Austrian government.
Together with the politician Nic-
colo Tommaseo, he endeavored to
prove to the world that Austria
had never observed the constitu-
tion which she had granted to
Lombardy and Venetia in 1815,
that the Hapsburgs, while posing
as the guardians of order, had
broken their own laws.
Since direct propaganda against
the Austrian rule was "verboten,"
the two men used every possible
chance for converting non-politi-
cal meetings into political ones.
Thus, in the fall of 1847, Manin
organized the Ninth Congress of
Italian savans which took place
at Venice, in order to discuss

with these scholars the burning
political problems in defiance of
the Austrian censorship and po-
lice. It is of interest that a num.
ber of Venetian Jews participated
in the Congress, especially the
Chief Rabbi, Abraham Lattes, who
joined a commission of archae-
ological studies, and Girolamo
Lattis, who had fostered the
drainage and cultivation of cer-
tain swampy regions in the Ve-
neto and who became a member
of a commission of agricultural
studies.
On January 8, 1848, Manin pre-
sented to the Central Congrega-
tion i(the State Authorities) the
country's demand for Home Rule.
The answer of the henchmen of
Austrian Chancellor Metternich to
this justified demand was simple.
They did what the henchmen of
Hitler, Mussolini or Franco would
have done in a similar case: they
arrested Manin and his friend
Tommaseo. A closed gondola, the
ill-famed "Black Maria" of Ven-
ice carried them to the prison.
Fortunately these two brave
men did not have to stay very
long in the dungeon; on March
15, 1848, the revolutionary wave
that had spread all over Europe
swept that arch-enemy of prog-
ress, Chancellor Metternich, off
his palace at the Ballhausplatz in

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